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THE  GOSPEL  OE  THE  INCARNATION. 


TWO    SERMONS 

PREACHED   IN   THE  CHAPEL  OF   PRINCETON 
THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

October  9,  1892,  and  January  8,  1S93, 


BY 


BENJAMIN    B.    WARFIELD, 

PROFESSOR   IN  THE   SEMINARY, 


NEW  YORK: 
ANSON   D.    F.    RANDOLPH    &  COMPANY, 

UNCORPORATEn) 

182   FIFTH   AVENUE. 
1893. 


PRESS  OF 

BDWARD  O,  JENKINS'  SON, 

MEW  YORK. 


TO    THE 
STUDENTS   OF    PRINXETON    SEMINARY, 

FOR     WHOM     THEY     WERE     PREPARED, 

TO  WHOM   THEY   WERE   PREACHED, 

AND   ON   WHOSE   REQUEST   THEY   ARE   NOW   PRINTED, 

®l)csc  Sermons 

IN    THEIR    PRINTED    FORM 

ARE  AFFECTIONATELY  DEDICATED. 


1. 

THE   END   OF   THE    INCARNATION. 


I. 

THE   END   OE   THE   INCARNATION. 

John  vii.  38-39  :  For  I  am  come  down  from  heaven,  not  to  do  mine  own 
will,  but  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  vie  ;  and  this  is  the  will  of  Him  that 
sent  me,  that  of  all  that  He  hath  given  me,  I  should  lose  nothing,  but 
should  raise  it  up  at  the  last  day. 

In  the  miracle  of  the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand  our 
Lord  presented  Himself  symbolically  to  man  as  the  food 
of  the  soul.  For,  as  Augustine  reminds  us,  though  the 
miracles  wrought  by  our  Lord  are  divine  works,  in- 
tended primarily  to  raise  the  mind  from  visible  things 
to  their  invisible  author,  yet  their  message  is  not  ex- 
hausted by  this.  They  are  to  be  interrogated  also  as  to 
what  they  tell  us  about  Christ,  and  they  will  be  found  to 
have  a  tongue  of  their  own  if  we  have  skill  to  understand 
it.  "  For,"  he  adds,  "  since  Christ  is  Himself  the  Word 
of  God,  even  a  deed  of  the  Word  is  a  word  to  us."  One 
of  His  miracles  is  accordingly  not  to  be  treated  as  a  mere 
picture,  which  we  may  be  satisfied  to  look  upon  and 
praise ;  but  rather  as  a  writing,  which  we  are  not  con- 
tent to  praise  though  we  delight  in  its  beauty,  but  find 
no  satisfaction  until  wc  have  read  and  understood  it. 
We  may  possibly  consider  somewhat  fanciful  Augus- 
tine's detailed  decipherment  of  the  signs  in  which  this 
miracle  is  written.  He  discovers  in  it  a  complete  para- 
ble of  the  salvation  of  man  and  of  men.  But  wc  can 
scarcely  refuse,  as  we  read  it  in  the  pregnant  record  of 


8  The  End  of  the  Incarnation. 

John,  to  say  in  Pauline  phrase,  "these  things  contain 
an  allegory." 

As  such,  indeed,  John  presents  it.  This  is  the  mean- 
ing of  his  care  to  tell  us,  as  he  introduces  his  recital,  that 
"the  passover  was  at  hand":  not  a  mere  chronological 
note,  we  may  be  sure  ;  nor  yet  merely  an  explanation  of 
the  presence  of  the  multitude,  gathered  for  the  pilgrim- 
age to  Jerusalem  ;  but  a  premonition  of  what  is  to  come, 
— John's  account  of  the  occasion  and  meaning  of  the 
miracle,  which  itself  was  the  occasion  of  the  great  dis- 
course on  the  bread  of  life.  Christ,  the  true  passover, 
chose  the  passover  time,  when  men's  minds  were  upon 
the  type,  to  present  the  anti-type  to  them  in  symbol  and 
open  speech.  It  was  therefore  also  that  He  tested  His 
disciples  with  searching  questions,  designed  to  bring 
them  to  the  discovery  of  whether  they  yet  knew  Him ; 
and  that  He  taxed  the  people  that  "  signs  "  were  wasted 
upon  them  (verse  26),  and  that  while  they  were  demand- 
ing a  sign  that  they  might  see  and  believe  (verse  30), 
the  sign  had  been  given  them,  and  though  they  had  seen, 
they  did  not  believe  (verse  36).  It  was  therefore 
above  all,  that  Christ  followed  up  the  miracle  with  the 
wonderful  discourse  in  which  He  explains  the  sign,  and 
declares  Himself  openly  to  be  "the  bread  of  God  that 
cometh  down  from  heaven  and  giveth  life  to  the  world." 
This  is  the  tremendous  truth  which  miracle  and  dis- 
course united  to  proclaim  to  the  multitudes  gathered  on 
the  shores  of  Gcnnesaret  at  that  passover  season ;  but 
which,  despite  type  and  sign  and  teaching — each  a  mani- 
fest word  from  God, — they  could  neither  receive  nor 
understand.  And  this  is  the  blessed  truth  which  our 
text, — taken  from  the  center  of  the  discourse  and  con- 
stituting, indeed,  its  kernel, — presents  to  our  apprehen- 


TJie  End  of  the  Incarnation.  9 

sion  and  belief  anew  to-day.  May  the  Spirit  of  truth, 
who  searches  all  thini^s,  even  the  deep  things  of  God, 
illuminate  our  minds  and  prepare  our  hearts,  that  we 
may  understand  and  believe. 

I.  Let  us  begin  by  observing  the  testimony  borne  by 
our  Lord  and  Master  here  to  His  heavenly  original  and 
descent:  "I  am  come  down  from  heaven,"  He  says. 
And  the  truth  here  declared  is  the  foundation  of  the 
entire  discourse  :  the  whole  gist  of  which  is  to  represent 
Jesus  as  the  "  bread  out  of  heaven,"  "  the  true  bread  out 
of  heaven,"  "the  bread  of  God  that  cometh  down  out  of 
heaven,"  which  the  Father  hath  given  for  the  life  of  the 
world.  I  need  not  remind  you  how  this  representation 
pervades  John's  Gospel, — from  the  testimony  of  the 
Baptist  (iii.  31),  that  He  who  was  to  supplant  him 
"cometh  from  above,"  and  is  therefore  "above  all,"  to 
Jesus'  own  triumphant  declaration  at  the  close  of  His 
life,  that,  His  work  being  finished,  He  is  ready  to  return 
to  the  Father  who  sent  Him,  and  to  the  glory  that  He 
had  with  Him  before  the  world  was  (xvii.  5,  11).  Our 
present  asseveration  is  but  a  single  instance  of  the  con- 
stant self-testimony  of  the  Son  of  Man  to  His  heavenly 
original  and  descent. 

The  older  Unitarianism  was  prodigal  of  miracle.  It 
was  not  the  supernatural,  but  the  mysteries  of  the  Holy 
Trinity  and  the  God-man  that  were  its  scandal.  When 
brought  face  to  face  with  such  passages  as  these,  it  was 
wont,  therefore,  to  explain  that  Jesus,  born  miraculously 
of  His  virgin  mother,  but  a  mere  man,  was  taken  up  to 
heaven  by  the  divine  power  to  learn  the  things  of  God  ; 
whence  He  again  descended  to  bring  divine  teaching  to 
men.  To  the  newer  Unitarianism,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  precisely  the  supernatural  which  is  the  ofTcnce.     Its 


lO  The  End  of  the  Incaj'uation. 

philosophical  forms  might  hospitably  receive  such  mys- 
teries as  the  Trinity  and  the  God-man,  if  only  they  may 
be  permitted  to  run  freely  into  their  moulds.  But  divine 
interventions  of  any  kind,  and  most  of  all  the  descent 
of  a  personal  God  from  heaven  to  earth,  to  be  incased 
in  flesh  and  to  herd  for  a  season  among  men,  it  cannot 
allow.  It,  therefore,  attacks  our  passages  with  a  theory 
of  ideal,  not  real,  preexistence,  and  teaches  that  Jesus 
means  only  that,  in  the  thought  and  intention  of  God, 
His  advent  into  the  world  had  long  been  provided  for, 
and  that,  in  that  sense,  He  was  with  God  and  came 
forth  from  God. 

How  weak,  how  inconceivable,  all  such  expedients 
are  before  the  majesty  of  Christ's  self-witness :  "  I  am 
come  down  from  heaven."  And  when  we  turn  over 
the  pages  of  this  Gospel, — the  leading  idea  of  which  it 
has  been  said,  inadequately  indeed,  but  so  far  truly,  is 
the  Divine  glory  of  Christ  in  the  incarnation, — and 
observe  our  Lord's  constant  witness  in  the  discourses 
recorded  in  it,  not  merely  to  His  descent  from  the 
Father,  but  to  His  essential  equality  and  oneness  with 
God,  to  His  eternal  preexistence  with  Him,  and  to  His 
prospective  return  to  His  primal  glory  with  the  Father, 
after  His  task  on  earth  is  accomplished, — how  our  spirits 
bow  in  worship  before  that  God  only-begotten  who  is  in 
the  bosom  of  the  Father,  who  became  flesh  and  taber- 
nacled among  us  for  a  season  full  of  grace  and  truth,  and 
"  declared  "  to  us  by  His  very  existence  among  us  that 
God,  not  only  whom  He  came  forth  from,  but  whom 
He  is. 

H.  We  should  not  fail  to  observe,  however,  that  the 
incarnation  is  not  spoken  of  in  our  text,  as  an  end  in 
itself,  but  rather  as  a  means  to  an  end.     The  object  of 


The  End  of  the  lucaniation.  1 1 

our  Lord  here  is  not  to  present  the  bare  fact  of  His 
having  come  down  from  heaven  to  the  wonder  of  men, 
but  to  expound  the  purpose  of  His  coming  down  from 
heaven.    "  I  am  come  down  from  heaven,"  He  declares, 
"  in  order  that  I  may  do  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  me." 
You  will  scarcely  need  to  be  reminded  that  this,  too,  is 
the  representation,  not  of    our  text  only,  but    of    the 
whole  body  of  relevant  deliverances  recorded  by  John 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Master,  and  indeed  of  the  entire 
Gospel    itself.     Everywhere  and  always,  it  is  not  the 
coming  down  from  heaven  itself,  but  the  purpose  of 
the  coming,  that  receives  the  emphasis.     And  this   is 
why  it  is  inadequate  to  say  that  the  leading  idea   of 
John's  Gospel  is  the  glory  of  Christ  in  the  incarnation. 
Its  leading  idea  is,  rather,  the   sufficient   end    of   the 
incarnation,  or,  in  other  words,  its  leading  purpose  is  to 
present  what  we  may  call  a  satisfactory  philosophy  of 
the  incarnation. 

And  this  is  the  precise  amount  of  truth  that  lies 
behind  the  assertion  so  freely  made  by  those  who  are 
stumbled  by  the  heights  of  John's  theology,  that  his 
Gospel  is  not  a  simple  narrative  of  fact,  but  an  ideolog- 
ical treatise,— which,  in  their  view,  is  equivalent  to  saying 
that  it  does  not  give  us  fact  but  fancy,  and  is  to  be 
looked  upon  not  as  a  sober  history  but  as  a  metaphys- 
ical essay.  But  does  history  cease  to  be  history  when 
it  passes  beyond  the  mere  tabulation  of  events,  and 
essays  to  marshal  them  according  to  their  relations 
and  under  the  categories  of  cause  and  effect  ?— when  it 
ceases  to  be  a  mere  chronicle,  in  a  word,  and  becomes 
what  we  have  learned  to  call  philosophical  history? 
And  is  it  to  be  made  a  reproach  to  a  writer  of  history 
that  he  has  sought  not  merely  to  collect,  but  also  to 


1 2  The  End  of  the  Incarnation. 

understand  his  facts  ;  and  to  record  them  in  such  a  way 
as  to  bring  out  their  internal  nature  as  well  as  their 
external  form? 

Bishop  Alexander,  in  his  delightful  little  book  on 
The  Leading  Ideas  of  the  Gospels,  places  the  matter 
relatively  to  John's  Gospel  in  a  very  clear  light.  "A 
great  life,"  he  reminds  us,  "  cannot  be  rendered  by  a 
simple  agglomeration  of  facts."  "A  great  life, — a  life 
whose  words  and  works  influence  mankind  profoundly, — 
is  not  sufficiently  told  by  merely  relating  its  facts  and 
dates.  What  an  enigma,  for  instance,  is  the  life  of 
Napoleon  !  How  many  of  his  biographies  are  mere 
masks,  concealing  those  bronze  features !  We  cannot 
understand  any  great  and  complicated  life,  good  or  evil, 
by  merely  recording  the  isolated  events  along  which  it 
moved.  It  is  an  organic  whole,  and  must  be  recon- 
structed as  such This,  then,  is  the  great  Leading 

Idea  of  St.  John's  Gospel.  Give7i  the  facts  of  Christ's 
life,  how  shall  we  bind  them  into  unity,  and  read 
them  as  a  whole.?  What  theory  of  His  Person  and 
Nature  will  give  us  a  logical  and  consistent  view  ?  .  .  .  . 
What  Christ  did  and  said  becomes  explicable  only  by 

knowing  what  Christ  is Some  who  have  not 

lost  all  reverence  for  Christianity  speak  as  if  St.  John's 
prologue  added  a  difficulty  for  faith  ;  as  if  St.  Matthew 
or  St.  Luke  on  the  incarnation  were  comparatively  easy 
to  receive.  Is  it  so  for  those  who  think  }  Place  side 
by  side  these  statements.  On  the  one  side — 'when  as 
Llis  Mother  Mary  was  espoused  to  Joseph,  before  they 
came  together  she  was  found  with  child  of  the  Holy 
Ghost'  On  the  other  side,  the  four  oracular  proposi- 
tions— '  in  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word 
was  with   God,   and    the  Word   was    God.     And   the 


The  End  of  the  Incarnatioii.  13 

Word  was  made  flesh.'  Whieh  is  easier  to  receive  ? 
....  In  St.  John  the  fact  of  the  Incarnation  is  lifted 
up  and  flooded  with  the  light  of  a  divine  idea.  If  in 
the  Unity  of  the  Divine  existence  there  be  a  Trinity 
of  Persons ;  if  the  Second  Person  of  that  Trinity  is  to 
assume  the  reality  of  flesh,  and  the  likeness  of  sinful 
flesh,  we  can  in  some  measure  see  why  He  needed  the 
tabernacle  of  a  body,  framed  and  moulded  by  the 
Eternal  Spirit,  to  be  His  fitting  habitation.  The  mys- 
tery of  a  Virgin  Mother  is  the  correlative  of  the  mystery 
of  the  Word  made  flesh."* 

Surely  this  is  most  admirably  said.  To  be  made 
quite  perfect,  it  needs  only  the  removal  of  the  emphasis 
from  the  nature  of  Christ  to  the  work  of  Christ.  "If 
the  Second  Person  of  that  Trinity  is  to  assume  the 
reality  of  flesh,  and  the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh."  .... 
Aye,  if.  ...  .  Dr.  Alexander  leaves  this  "  ?_/""  hano-- 
ing  in  the  air.  But  not  so  John.  To  give  an  adequate 
account  of  it  is  just  the  object  and  chief  end  of  his 
Gospel.  We  need  to  amend  the  postulation  of  the 
problem,  therefore,  so  far  as  not  only  to  insert,  but  to 
emphasize  this  element,  "  Give7i  the  facts  of  Christ's 
life,  how  shall  we  bind  them  together  into  unity,  and 
read  them  as  a  whole?  What  theory  of  His  Person 
and  Nature,  and  Purpose  and  Work,  will  give  us  a  loi^- 
ical  and  consistent  view.?"  This  is  the  problem  that 
John's  Gospel  answers.  And  in  answering  it,  it  gives 
us  a  philosophy  of  the  incarnation,  and  thus  renders 
not  only  the  incarnation  itself,  but  all  that  Incarnated 
Life,  not  only  credible  but  natural,  and  not  only  nat- 
ural, may  we  not  even  say  ?   but  almost  inevitable — 

*  pp.  182-186. 


14  The  End  of  the  Incarnation. 

impossible  to  be  otherwise.  And  thus  John  fulfils  the 
end  of  his  writing  :  "These  are  written,  that  ye  may 
believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God;  and 
that  believing  ye  may  have  life  in  His  name." 

III.  What,  then,  is  the  account  of  the  incarnation 
which  this  Gospel  thus  commends  to  us  as  its  phi- 
losophy ?  We  note  at  once  that  in  our  text  our  Lord 
states  it,  in  the  first  instance,  relatively  not  to  man,  but 
to  God.  The  reason  of  the  incarnation,  rendering  it 
credible,  natural,  inevitable,  is  traced  back  into  the 
councils  of  the  Godhead.  "  I  am  come  down  from 
heaven,  not  to  do  my  own  will,  but  the  will  of  Him 
that  sent  me." 

The  purpose  of  the  incarnation  is  therefore  primarily 
to  please  God  the  Father,  and  to  perform  His  will. 
We  cannot  avoid  the  implication  that  the  incarnated 
one  comes,  therefore,  in  a  suboi-dinate  capacity.  He 
came  down  from  heaven  not  to  do  His  own  will,  but  the 
will  of  Him  that  sent  Him.  He  was  sent.  He  was 
given  a  commission,  a  work,  to  do.  How  this  concep- 
tion is  repeated  over  and  over  again  in  the  discourses 
recorded  by  John  !  Even  to  John  the  Baptist  He  is 
the  "  sent  of  God "  (John  iii.  34).  When  Nicodemus 
approached  Him  as  a  teacher  come  from  God,  He  ex- 
plained that  He  was  not  come  primarily  as  a  teacher, 
but  as  one  sent  by  God  (iii.  1 7)  to  do  a  work.  And 
this  is  the  burden  of  the  great  discourses  at  the  pool 
of  Bethesda  (v.  23,  36),  at  the  feast  of  Tabernacles  (vii. 
16,  18,  28,  29),  on  the  Light  of  the  World  (viii.  16,  18, 
29,  43),  and  as  well  of  the  closing  discourses  at  the  last 
passover  (xvi.  5,  xvii.  16,  xviii.  t^Z)-  ^^^  "^^  alike  Jesus 
is  the  sent  of  God,  come  not  of  Himself  (vii.  28,  xviii. 
43)  to  seek  His  own  will,  but  to  do  the  will  of  Him 


The  End  of  the  Licaynation.  15 

that  sent  Him  (v.  30)  ;  and  only  when  He  had  "accom- 
plished the  work  given  Him  to  do"  (xvii.  4)  to  return 
to  the  Father  who  sent  Him  (xvii.  16). 

Now  this  subordinate  relation  in  which  Jesus  thus 
pervasively  represents  Himself  to  have  stood  to  the 
Father,  so  as  to  have  been  sent  by  Him,  must  be  a  mat- 
ter either  of  nature  or  of  arrangement.  It  must  be 
either  essential  or  economic.  It  must  find  its  account 
and  origin  either  in  the  necessity  of  nature  or  else  in  the 
provisions  of  a  plan.  But  side  by  side  with  this  per- 
fectly pervasive  proclamation  of  His  subordination  to  the 
Father,  in  the  whole  matter  of  the  incarnation  itself,  and 
the  purpose  or  "will"  that  lies  behind  that  incarnation 
and  gives  it  its  justification  and  its  philosophical  account, 
there  runs  an  equally  pervasive  assertion  by  Jesus  Him- 
self and  by  His  historian  as  well,  of  His  essential  equality 
and  oneness  with  God.  He  was  not  only  in  the  begin- 
ning with  God  :  He  was  God.  He  is  the  only-begotten 
God,  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father.  To  have  seen 
Him  is  to  have  seen  the  Father  also.  He  draws  and  re- 
ceives from  Thomas,  the  worshipping  cry,  "My  Lord 
and  my  God."  He  declares  to  the  Jews,  "  I  and  the 
Father  are  One."  It  seems  to  be  clear,  therefore,  that 
the  subordination  in  which  the  Father  is  recognized 
as  greater  than  He,  prescribing  a  "  will  "  for  Him  to  come 
into  the  world  to  perform,  is  economic,  not  essential  ;  a 
matter  of  arrangement,  not  of  necessity  of  nature. 

By  such  a  representation  we  are,  of  course,  carried  at 
once  back  into  the  darkness,  or,  what  is  equally  blind- 
ing, into  the  blaze  of  mystery.  It  may  he  thought  that 
it  is  enough  to  be  asked  to  believe  in  the  mysteries  of 
the  God-man  and  of  the  Trinity, — that  within  the  unity 
of  the  Godhead  there  exists  such  a  distinction  of  per- 


1 6  The  End  of  the  Incarnation. 

sons  that  of  each  we  may  assert  in  turn  that  from  the 
beginning  he  has  been  with  God,  and  has  been  God. 
Are  we  to  add  this  additional  mystery  of  fancying  the 
persons  of  the  Godhead,  though  numerically  one  in 
essence  and  sharers  in  all  the  divine  attributes,  "  acting," 
as  Dr.  Martineau  puts  it,  "  each  on  the  other  as  outside 
beings  and  conducting  a  divine  drama  among  them- 
selves,"— imposing  tasks  on  one  another,  requiring  con- 
ditions of  one  another,  and  earning  favors  from  one 
another  ?  No  doubt  it  is  past  our  comprehension.  But 
do  we  gain  or  lose  by  denying  its  possibility,  its  reality  ? 
What  does  the  Trinity  mean,  if  it  does  not  mean  such  a 
distinction  of  persons  that  each  may  say  relatively  to 
the  other,  "  I,"  and  "  Thou,"  and  "  He  "  ?  What  can  the 
incarnation  of  the  Second  Person  mean,  if  the  persons 
may  not  stand  over  against  one  another  in  a  measure 
far  transcending  our  power  to  comprehend  ?  And  let 
us  remember  that  John  presents  this  conception  to  us, 
not  as  an  added  difhculty  to  faith,  but  as  the  philosophy, 
the  explanation  of  the  incarnation.  It  may  well  happen 
here,  too,  that  two  mysteries  support  and  render  credi- 
ble each  the  other, — as  two  beams  of  wood,  neither  of 
which  could  easily  stand  alone,  when  bowed  together 
not  only  support  each  other  but  provide  a  firm  founda- 
tion upon  which  you  may  safely  pile  the  weight  of  a 
slated  roof.  To  adopt  Bishop  Alexander's  mode  of  state- 
ment,— "  If  in  the  Unity  of  the  Divine  Existence  there 
be  a  Trinity  of  Persons,  and  if  the  Second  Person  of  that 
Trinity  is  to  assume  the  reality  of  flesh  and  the  like- 
ness of  sinful  flesh," — is  it  an  additional  difficulty  or  an 
aid  to  faith  in  this  supernal  mystery  to  be  further  told 
that  this  colossal  humiliation  of  the  Son  of  God  was 
not  an  objectless  display  of  arbitrary  power,  nor  yet  a 


The  End  of  the  Incarnation.  1 7 

tentative  and  unconsidered  effort  of  divine  compassion 
to  do  somewhat,  as  yet  undetermined  in  kind  or  amount, 
for  sinful  mankind,  but  the  execution  in  time  of  an 
eternal  plan,— a  plan  born  of,  and  redolent  in  its  every 
part  with  the  infinite  compassion  of  God,  shaped  in  all  its 
details  from  all  eternity  by  brooding  love,  and  now^  re- 
maining only  to  be  executed  by  each  person  involved 
taking  and  completing  his  appointed  part  in  its  tre- 
mendous work  ?  The  mystery  of  the  covenant  is  the 
correlative  of  the  mystery  of  the  incarnation.  Without 
its  postulation  the  incarnation  would  present  increased 
difficulties  of  belief.  Without  the  added  words,  "In 
order  to  do  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  me,"  the  declara- 
tion, "  I  am  come  down  from  heaven,"  would  remain  a 
simple  marvel  and  prove  a  strain  on  faith. 

And  now  let  us  not  fail  to  observe  that  it  results  from 
what  we  have  said,  that  John's  Gospel  is  the  Gospel  of 
the  Covenant.  If  its  leading  idea  is  not  merely  the 
glory  of  the  incarnation,  but  the  philosophy  of  the  in- 
carnation ;  and  if  that  philosophy  runs  back  into  an 
economic  arrangement  or  plan  between  the  Persons  of 
the  Trinity,  by  which  the  Second  Person  comes  to  per- 
form a  work  committed  to  Him  by  the  Father,  not  to 
do  His  own  will,  but  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  Him  : 
this  is  but  another  way  of  saying  that  the  leading  idea 
of  John's  Gospel  is  the  idea  of  the  Covenant.  And 
is  it  not  so?  Search  and  look,  and  you  will  find  not 
only  that  this  covenant  idea  recurs  again  and  again 
throughout  the  Gospel,  with  a  frequency  and  an  em- 
phasis which  throw  it  well  into  the  foreground,  but  that 
the  book,  as  a  whole,  is  moulded  in  its  form  and  con- 
tents upon  it.  The  burden  of  its  first  chapters  is  Christ's 
testimony  that  He  has  come  because  sent  by  the  Father  ; 


1 8  The  End  of  the  hicarnation. 

the  burden  of  the  last  chapters  is  His  approaching  re- 
turn to  the  Father  who  sent  Him  ;  the  accomplished 
work  lies  between.  And  therefore  it  is  that  when  Nico- 
demus  came  to  Him  at  the  opening  of  His  ministry 
and  asked  for  teaching,  Jesus  pointed  him  rather  to  His 
work,  and  declared  the  doctrine  of  regeneration  itself 
"an  earthly  thing"  compared  with  the  heavenly  myste- 
ries He  had  to  tell, — those  mysteries  of  His  descent  from 
heaven  (iii.  13),  sent  by  the  Father  (iii.  17)  to  save  the 
world  (iii.  16).  And  therefore  it  is  that  in  the  midst  of 
His  ministry  He  opens  this  great  discourse  from  which 
our  text  is  taken,  by  declaring  that  the  Son  of  Man  has 
been  "sealed,"  appointed  and  set  apart,  by  the  Father 
for  the  work  of  giving  eternal  life  to  men  ;  and  when 
His  disciples  stumbled  at  the  height  of  the  great  truth 
involved, — that  He  had  come  down  from  heaven  to  give 
His  flesh  as  the  food  of  the  soul, — He  sorrowfully  added, 
"  What,  then,  if  you  should  see  the  Son  of  Man  ascend- 
ing where  He  was  before  }  "  And  therefore  it  is  that  at 
the  end  of  His  life  He  compares  His  finished  work  with 
the  joy  a  woman  has  after  travail,  when  at  length  the 
child  is  born  (xvi.  21)  ;  and  declares  that,  having  accom- 
plished the  work  which  the  Father  gave  Him  to  do 
(xvii.  21),  the  covenant  condition  is  fulfilled,  and  the 
covenanted  reward  is  at  hand,  and  He  is  about  to  return 
to  His  primal  glory.  John's  Gospel, — we  ought  not  to 
miss  it, — is  the  Gospel  of  the  Covenant. 

IV.  How  our  hearts  should  burn  within  us  as  we 
approach  the  last  and  most  central  question  of  all,  and 
ask  what  is  our  Lord's  account  of  the  nature  and  terms 
of  this  mysterious  but  most  blessed  covenant,  to  fulfil 
the  conditions  of  which  He  came  down  from  heaven. 
We  observe  at  once, — and  with  what  emotions  of  glad- 


The  End  of  the  Incarnation.  19 

ness  we  ought  to  observe  it, — that  it  concerns  the  salva- 
tion of  men.  And  equally  at  once  we  observe,  with  still 
swelling  emotion,  that  it  is  complete  and  perfect  in  its 
provisions, — that  it  provides  for  an  entire  and  finished, 
for  a  sure  and  unfailing  salvation.  And  we  observe  that 
this  involves — as  of  course  it  must  involve — the  conse- 
quence that  it  is  definite  and  precise  in  its  terms, — that 
it  contemplates  a  definite  and  particularly  designated 
body  of  men.  "  And  this  is  the  will  of  Ilim  that  sent 
me,  that  of  all  that  He  hath  given  me,  I  should  lose 
nothing,  but  should  raise  it  up  at  the  last  day."  The 
will  of  the  Father  which  Christ  came  down  from  heaven 
to  do,  concerned,  then,  not  all  men,  but  some  men  : 
"All  that  He  hath  given  me."  And  His  will  with 
reference  to  these,  which  He  sent  the  Son  to  perform, 
was  not  the  making  of  some  indefinite  provision  looking 
toward  their  rescue  from  sin  and  shame,  but  the  definite, 
actual,  complete,  and  final  saving  of  them  :  that  "  I 
should  lose  nothing  of  it,  but  should  raise  it  up  at  the 
last  day." 

Let  our  hearts  stand  still  while  we  read  these  creat 
provisions.  It  is  the  testimony  of  the  covenanted  Son 
Himself,  as  to  the  terms  of  the  covenant  which  He  came 
to  fulfil,  that  it  had  a  definite  and  well-defined  subjecl, — 
a  restricted  subject  if  you  will,  a  "  limited  "  subject, — 
not  all  mankind,  but  a  given  body  of  men, — a  given 
body  of  men  who,  in  the  text,  are  brought  into  explicit 
contrast  with  those  who,  though  they  saw,  yet  believed 
not,  because  they  could  not  come  to  Him  except  the 
Father  drew  them,  and  He  draweth  none  but  those 
whom  He  hath  given  the  Son  and  for  the  saving  of 
whom  the  Son  came  down  from  heaven  :  a  precisely 
determined  body,  therefore,  "  particularly  and  unchange- 


20  The  End  of  the  I)icar7iaHon. 

ably  designed,  and  their  number  so  definite  that  it  can- 
not be  either  increased  or  diminished.''  But  it  is  as 
well — and  it  could  not  be  so  at  all,  unless  it  were  "  as 
well" — the  testimony  of  the  covenanted  Son  Himself 
to  the  terms  of  the  covenant  which  He  came  to  fulfil, 
that  it  had  a  definite  and  fullv-determined  end, — not 
merely  the  rendering  the  salvation  of  men  possible  ;  nor 
merely  the  removing  of  the  legal  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  the  salvation  of  men  ;  nor  merely  the  breaking  down 
of  whatever  difficulties  may  stand  in  the  path  of  the  free 
outflow  of  God's  love  to  men  ;  much  less  merely  the 
introduction  into  the  world  of  a  better  example  of  life 
than  had  hitherto  been  before  men,  or  of  a  new  divine 
force  making  for  righteousness;  or  the  impressing  of 
men  with  a  deeper  sense  of  the  love  of  God  for  them,  or 
of  His  hatred  of  sin  ;  but  the  actual,  complete,  and  sure 
salvation  of  all  that  the  Father  had  given  the  Son  : 
*'  This  is  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  me,  that  all  that  He 
hath  given  me,  I  should  lose  nothing  of  it,  but  should 
raise  it  up  at  the  last  day." 

In  a  word,  we  have  presented  to  us  here,  in  these 
pregnant  words,  not  only  in  outline,  but  in  all  its  essen- 
tial details,  what  has  come  to  be  known  among  us  as 
the  Covenant  of  Redemption.  Men  may,  no  doubt, 
find  fault  with  this  doctrine.  They  may  say,  as  they 
have  said,  that  thus  our  Lord,  the  Saviour  of  the  world, 
is  made  not  the  Saviour  of  men,  but  only  of  a  small, 
select  company  of  men.  It  docs  not  appear  with  what 
justification  the  number  of  those  purchased  by  His 
precious  blood  is  represented  as  small,  when  John 
represents  them  as  an  immense  multitude  whom  no 
man  can  number.  But  when  the  alternative  is — as  the 
logical  alternative  assuredly  is — limitation  of  the  saving 


The  E)id  of  the  Incarnation.  21 

work  of  Christ,  either  in  its  subjects  or  in  its  substance, 
who,  on  either  Biblical  grounds  or  on  grounds  of 
Christian  hope  and  love,  can  hesitate  one  moment  in  his 
decision  ?  If  the  work  of  Christ  is  not  complete,  if  it 
did  not  purchase  for  us  a  sure  salvation,  the  charter  of 
our  redemj)tion  is  gone.  It  has  sometimes  been  thought- 
lessly said  that  this  doctrine  of  the  Covenant  of  Re- 
demption is  an  invention  of  the  Reformed  Theology. 
A  distinguished  professor  at  Andover,  Dr.  Park,  was 
accustomed  to  tell  his  pupils  that  the  Covenant  was 
made  in  Holland  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  And  a  distinguished  Baptist  teacher,  Dr.  E.  G. 
Robinson,  has  lately  assured  the  religious  public  that 
the  Covenant  theology  has  been  finally  entombed  in  the 
grave  of  Charles  Hodge.  But  not  only  had  the  doc- 
trine of  the  covenants  already  come  to  its  rights  and 
been  made  the  architectonic  principle  of  theology,  long 
before  Cocceius  published  his  Suni,  of  the  Doctrine  of 
the  Covenants,  (1648) — for  to  him  was  Dr.  Park  allud- 
ing,— and  indeed  been  so  used,  before  his  supposed 
discovery  of  it,  in  so  representative  a  symbol  as  the 
Westminster  Confession  : — but  frorn  the  beginning  of 
that  new  discovery  of  the  way  of  salvation  which  we 
call  the  Reformation,  it  had  been  a  prominent  feature 
in  the  teachinc^  of  Reformed  theolooians  in  evcrv  land. 
And  we  may  well  believe  that  it  is  destined  to  remain 
the  central  stronghold  of  faith  to  the  end  of  time, 
among  all  who  in  simplicity  of  heart  draw  the  matter 
of  their  teaching  out  of  this  record  of  our  Saviour's 
words.  For  what  element  of  the  doctrine  is  lacking 
here  ?  "I  am  come  down  from  heaven,  not  to  do  my 
own  will,  but  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  me":  there  is 
the  assertion  of  an  economic  arrangement  as  the  pre- 


22  The  End  of  the  Incar7iation. 

condition  of  the  incarnation,  and  of  the  prestipulation 
of  the  incarnated  work.  "And  this  is  the  will  of  Him 
that  sent  me,  that  of  all  that  He  hath  given  me  I  should 
lose  nothing,  but  should  raise  it  up  at  the  last  day": 
there  is  the  revelation  of  the  contents  of  the  pre- 
incarnation  arrangement,  and  the  provision  through  the 
incarnation  for  the  certain  salvation  of  a  chosen  body  of 
lost  men.  "  All  that  the  Father  giveth  me  shall  come 
unto  me";  "No  man  can  come  unto  me  except  the 
Father  which  sent  me,  draw  Him":  there  is  the  twin 
definition  of  the  subjects  of  the  salvation.  Or,  if  we 
desire  further  witness,  than  this  one  passage,  it  is  spread 
fully  on  the  pages  of  this  Gospel.  Let  us  attend  only 
to  those  calm  and  final  words  which,  as  His  work  was 
accomplishing,  our  blessed  Redeemer  addressed,  not  to 
us  men,  but  to  His  Father,  in  a  divinely  assured  asser- 
tion of  His  righteous  claims  upon  the  fruit  of  His  work. 
"  Father,  the  hour  is  come :  glorify  thy  Son,  that  the 
Son  may  glorify  thee:  even  as  thou  gavest  Him 
authority  over  all  flesh,  that  to  all  that  thou  hast  given 

Him,    He  should  give  to  them    eternal    life I 

glorified  thee  on  the  earth,  having  accomplished  the 
work  which  thou  hast  given  me  to  do.  And  now,  O 
Father,  glorify  thou  me  with  thine  own  self,  with  the 
glory  which  I  had  with  thee  before  the  world  was.  I 
manifested  thy  name  unto  the  men  whom  thou  didst  give 
me  out  of  the  world:  thine  they  were,  and  thou  didst 

give  them  to  me I   pray  for  them  ;  I  pray  not 

for  the  world,  but  for  those  whom  thou  hast  given  me." 
All  His  work  is  in  fulfilment  of  an  arrangement  with 
the  Father;  and  the  whole  of  it,  down  to  this  High- 
Priestly  prayer  itself,  making  intercession  for  His  own, 
concerns,   primarily  and    in    its  chief  import,   not   the 


The  End  of  the  lucarnaiioft.  23 

world,  but  those  whom  the  Father  gave  Mini  out  of 
the  world,  and  secures  beyond  failure  their  complete 
salvation.  This  is  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  Covenant 
of  Redemption  :  the  Reformed  theology  has  grasped  it, 
and  teaches  it ;  but  it  has  not  added  one  single  thought 
to  it. 

And  now  let  us  bask  a  little,  before  we  close,  in  the 
comforting  assurances  of  this  blessed  teaching. 

I.  How  the  love  of  God  is  magnified  to  us  by  this 
teaching.  It  is  not  from  a  yesterday  only  that  He  has 
busied  Himself  with  our  salvation.  In  the  depths  of 
eternity  our  foreseen  miseries  were  a  cause  of  care  to 
Him.  In  that  mysterious  intercourse  between  Father 
and  Son,  which  is  as  eternal  as  the  essence  of  Godhead 
itself,  we — our  state,  our  sin,  our  helplessness,  and  the 
dreadfulncss  of  our  condition  and  end, — were  a  subject 
of  consideration  and  solicitude.  What  a  God  this  is 
that  is  unveiled  before  us  here.  A  God  of  holiness  :  a 
God  so  holy  that  even  in  the  abyss  of  eternity-past  He 
could  not  rest  indifferent  to  the  sin  which  was  only 
after  the  lapse  of  innumerable  ages,  to  dawn  in  this 
corner  of  the  as  yet  unexistent  universe.  A  God  of 
justice:  a  God  so  just  that  already  His  indignation 
burned  against  the  as  yet  uncommitted  sin  of  such 
petty  creatures  of  His  will  as  man.  But  a  God  of  love  : 
a  love  so  inconceivably  vast  as  already  in  the  profundity 
of  the  unlimited  past  to  brood  over  unimaginable  plans 
of  mercy  toward  these  few  guilty  wretches  among  the 
numberless  multitudes  of  His  contemplated  creatures. 
When  the  Psalmist  raised  his  eyes  to  the  heavens  above, 
the  work  of  the  fingers  of  the  Almighty,  and  considered 
the  moon  and  stars  which  He  had  ordained,  he  was  lost 
in  a  natural   wonder  that  so  great  a  Creator  should 


24  TJie  End  of  the  Incavjiatioii. 

concern  Himself  with  so  puny  a  creature:  "What  is 
man  that  Thou  art  mindful  of  him?  And  the  son 
of  man  that  Thou  shouldst  visit  him?"  But  how 
mucli  greater  a  marvel  is  before  us  now.  It  is  not  man 
as  man, — a  weak  and  puny  creature — that  we  have  to 
consider ;  but  man  as  sinner, — this  weak  and  puny 
creature  become  vile  and  filthy,  offensive  and  hateful  to 
a  holy  and  just  God.  It  is  not  in  contrast  even  with 
the  grandeur  of  the  worlds  circling  about  worlds  which 
crowd  the  depths  of  the  heavens  and  dwarf  the  conse- 
quence of  this  speck  of  earth  on  the  skirts  of  the  uni- 
verse which  is  our  home,  that  we  are  to  consider  him  ; 
but  in  contrast  with  the  majesty  of  the  increate  Triune 
maker  of  all  that  is.  It  is  not  simply  that  God  has 
taken  notice  of  this  sinful,  puny  creature,  that  we  have 
to  consider  ;  but  that  the  All-Holy  and  All-Blessed  God 
has  felt  care  and  solicitude  for  his  fate  and  looked  not 
at  His  own  things  in  comparison  with  his.  What  in- 
deed is  sinful  man  that  God  should  love  him  ;  and 
before  the  foundations  of  the  world  should  prepare  to 
save  him  by  so  inconceivable  a  plan  as  to  give  His  only- 
begotten  Son  as  a  ransom  for  his  life !  My  brethren, 
this  is  not  to  the  glory  of  man,  but  to  the  glory  of  God  ; 
it  is  not  the  expression  of  our  dignity  and  worth,  but 
raises  our  wondering  hearts  to  the  contemplation  of  the 
breadth  and  length,  and  height  and  depth  of  the  love 
of  God  that  passeth  knowledge. 

2.  And  how  our  appreciation  of  the  perfection  of  the 
work  of  our  Saviour  is  enhanced  by  this  teaching.  As 
it  was  upon  no  sudden  caprice  that  He  came  into  the 
world,  but  in  execution  of  a  long-cherished  and 
thoroughly  laid  plan,  so  it  was  no  partial  work  which 
He  performed,  but  the  whole  work  of  salvation.    "This 


The  End  of  the  Incaryiatioii.  25 

is  a  faithful  saying,  and  worthy  of  all  acceptation,  That 
Christ  Jesus  came  into  the  world  to  save  sinners."  And 
this  He  has  accomplished,  even  to  the  uttermost.  When 
He  cried  upon  the  cross,  as  His  agony  went  out  in  the 
darkness  of  death,— a  death  for  us— in  those  words  of 
deepest  import  and  of  mighty  power,  "  It  is  finished  !" 
— when  in  His  great  sacerdotal  prayer,  he  prolcptically 
declared  that  He  had  "accomplished  the  work"  which 
the  Father  "had  given  Him  to  do,"  and  was  now  ready 
to  lay  aside  His  humiliation  and  reenter  His  glory  :  the 
precise  thing  .which  He  published  as  "finished"  and 
"accomplished,"  was  salvation.  All  has  been  done  by 
Him.  His  saving  work  neither  needs  nor  admits  of 
supplementary  addition  by  any  needy  child  of  man, — 
even  to  the  extent  of  an  iota.  When  we  look  to  Him 
we  are  raising  grateful  eyes,  not  to  one  who  invites  us 
to  save  ourselves;  nor  merely  to  one  who  has  broken 
out  a  path,  in  which  walking,  we  may  attain  to  salva- 
tion ;  nor  yet  merely  to  one  who  offers  us  a  salvation 
wrought  out  by  Him,  on  a  condition  ;  but  to  one  who 
has  saved  us,— who  is  at  once  the  beginning  and  the 
middle  and  the  end  of  our  salvation,  the  author  and  the 
finisher  of  our  faith. 

What  can  we  possibly  need  tnat  we  do  not  find  pro- 
vided in  Him?  Do  we  hopelessly  groan  under  the 
curse  of  the  broken  law,  hanging  menacingly  over  us? 
Christ  has  "  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of  the  law,  hav- 
ing been  made  a  curse  for  us"  (Gal.  iii.  13).  Do  we 
know  that  only  he  that  worketh  righteousness  is  accept- 
able to  God,  and  despair  of  attaining  life  on  so  unaciiiev- 
able  a  condition?  Christ  Jesus  "hath  of  God  been 
made  unto  us  righteousness"  (i  Cor.  i.  30).  Do  we 
loathe  ourselves  in  the  pollution  of  our  sins,  and  know 


26  The  Ejid  of  the  Incarnation. 

that  God  is  greater  than  we,  and  that  we  must  be  an 
offence  in  His  holy  sight  ?  The  blood  of  Christ  clcanseth 
us  from  all  sin  (i  John  i.  7).  But  do  we  not  need  faith, 
that  we  may  be  made  one  with  Him  and  so  secure  these 
benefits?  Faith,  too,  is  the  gift  of  God:  and  that  we 
believe  on  Him  is  granted  by  God  in  the  behalf  of  Christ 
(Phil.  i.  29).  Nothing  has  been  forgotten,  nothing 
neglected,  nothing  left  unprovided.  In  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ,  the  great  God,  in  His  perfect  wisdom  and 
unfailing  power,  has  taken  our  place  before  the  outraged 
justice  of  God  and  under  His  perfect  law,  and  has 
wrought  out  a  complete  salvation. 

3.  What  an  indefectible  certitude  of  salvation  is 
given  by  this  great  teaching.  If  Christ  Jesus  came  to 
save  and  has  saved,  how  can  salvation  fail  ?  If  the  free 
gift  of  God  is  eternal  life  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord 
(R.O.  vi.  23),  how  can  this  eternal  life  thus  freely  given 
go  out  in  time,  and  fail  to  accord  with  its  very  designa- 
tion as  eternal  ?  If  Christ  has  undertaken  not  merely 
to  open  a  way  of  salvation  to  us,  but  to  save  us;  if  He 
came  into  the  world  for  the  precise  purpose  of  perform- 
ing this  will  of  God,  "  that  of  all  that  He  hath  given 
Him,  He  should  lose  nothing,  but  should  raise  it  up  at 
the  last  day," — what  possibility  lies  open  of  the  failure 
of  this  great  design,  framed  in  eternity  by  Triune  God- 
head, and  executed  in  time  by  none  other  than  the 
strong  Son  of  God }  Therefore  our  gracious  Lord 
assures  us :  "  All  that  the  Father  giveth  me  sJiall  come 
unto  me,  and  him  that  cometh  unto  me  I  will  in  no  wise 
cast  out."  And,  therefore.  His  servant,  condescending 
to  the  weakness  of  our  fears,  argues  with  us :  "  God 
commendeth  His  love  towards  us,  in  that,  while  we 
were  yet  sinners,  Christ  died  for  us.     Much  more,  then, 


The  End  of  tJie  Inca^'iiation.  27 

being  justified  by  His  blood,  shall  we  be  saved  from 
wrath  by  Him,"  Oh,  the  certitude  in  that  "much 
more."  "  If  God  be  for  us,"  he  argues  again,  "  who  can 
be  against  us?  He  that  spared  not  His  own  Son, 
but  delivered  Him  up  for  us  all,  how  shall  He  not  also 
with  Him,  freely  give  us  all  things?  ....  Who  shall 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ?"  O  weak  and 
trembling  soul,  can  you  not  find,  not  courage  merely, 
but  certitude  in  this?  What  matters  your  weakness  ? 
Your  salvation  rests  not  on  it,  but  on  God's  strength. 
He  loves  you  ;  He  determined  to  save  you  ;  He  sent 
His  Son  to  save  you  ;  He  has  come  to  do  it :  He  has 
done  it.  You  are  saved  :  it  cannot  fail,  unless  God's 
set  purpose  can  fail ;  unless  Christ's  power  to  save  can 
fail ;  unless  His  promises  of  love  can  fail. 

4.  What  a  clear  ground  of  assurance  of  salvation  is 
furnished  by  this  great  teaching.  Does  some  wayward 
spirit  say  :  "All  this  is  true  only  of  the  elect,  those  whom 
the  Father  gave  to  Christ.  And  I,  alas  !  how  may  I  know 
that  I  am  of  the  elect?  "  Ah,  self-tormenting  soul,  why 
expend  strength  in  prying  into  God's  secrets,  instead  of 
taking  Him  at  His  word?  It  is  true  indeed  that  it  is 
only  those  whom  He  has  given  to  Christ  that  Christ 
has  saved ;  and  the  comfort,  as  the  salvation,  is  for  them 
alone.  But  it  is  not  true  that  God  requires  of  you 
election  for  salvation,  or  offers  you  predestmation  as  the 
way  of  life.  He  offers  you  not  predestination,  but 
Christ ;  and  He  requires  of  you  not  election,  but  faith. 
Do  you  make  election  itself  a  ground  of  doubt  and 
despair  ?  This,  says  an  old  Puritan,  is  indeed  to  gather 
poison  out  of  the  sweetest  of  herbs.  "  God,"  says  he, 
"  layeth  it  as  a  duty  upon  every  one  to  re[)ent  and  be- 
lieve, to  come  to  Him  and  he  shall  have  rest  to   his 


28  The  End  of  the  Incarnation. 

soul If,  then,  thou  belicvest,  thou  repcntest,  this 

may  be  a  sure  testimony  unto  thee  of  thy  everlasting 
glory."  So,  then,  "  it's  no  wonder,"  he  continues, 
"  that  Paul  doth  often  run  out  in  large  expressions  con- 
cerning God's  love,  his  predestination  from  all  eternity" 
— note  how  he  identifies  the  two — "  when  he  hath  occa- 
sion to  praise  God  for  the  calling  and  conversion  of  any 
in  time  ;  for  this  is  to  trace  the  stream  till  we  find  its 
well-head."  *  "  Madmen  "  is  what  John  Calvin  calls  those 
"who  seek  their  salvation  in  the  whirlpool  of  predesti- 
nation ;  not  keeping  the  way  of  salvation  which  is 
exhibited  to  them."  "  To  every  man,"  he  explains, 
"  his  faith  is  the  sufficient  proof  of  the  eternal  election 
of  God  ;  and  it  would  be  a  shocking  sacrilege  to  carry 
the  inquiry  behind  it :  for  an  aggravated  insult  is  offered 
the  Holy  Spirit  if  we  refuse  to  assent  to  His  simple 
testimony."  f 

Election  does  indeed  lie  at  the  root  of  our  salvation  : 
but  faith  is  the  proof  of  election.  Are  we  saved  ?  The 
question  is  resolved  in  this :  Do  we  believe  in  Jesus 
Christ.^  Christ  indeed  says,  "This  is  the  will  of  Him 
who  sent  me,  that  of  all  that  He  hat h  given  vie,  I  should 
lose  nothing,  but  should  raise  it  up  at  the  last  day." 
Here  is  election  the  root  of  the  saving  work  of  Christ. 
But  have  you  failed  to  note  or  to  remember  that  he 
immediately  adds:  "  For,  this  is  the  will  of  my  Father, 
that  every  one  that  beholdeth  the  Son  and  belicveth  on 
Him  should  have  eternal  life,  and  that  I  should  raise 
him  up  at  the  last  day."      Here  is  the  work  of  Christ 

*  A.  Burfjess,  Spiritual  Refining,  ed.  165"!,  pp.  644,  595. 
t  Com.  on  John  vi.  46. 


The  End  of  the  Incarnation.  29 

received  in  faith  the  ground  of  salvation:   and  here  is 
faith,  laying  hold  of  Christ,  the  evidence  of  salvation. 
And,'  therefore,  it  is  not  only  said,  "  All  that  the  Father 
giveth  me  shall  come  unto  me,"  but  it  is  immediately 
added  :  ''And  him  that  conieth  to  me  I  will  in  no  wise 
cast  Ota"     These  words  are  gracious  enough  in  their 
broadest  sense  to  send  a  thrill  of  joy  through  the  heart. 
But  there  lies  hid  within  them  a  further  delicate  grace 
which   is  lost   in   the  English   translation.     The  word 
for  "  come  "  is  so  varied  in  the  two  clauses  as  to  lay  the 
stress  in  the  first  instance  "  upon  the  successful  issue  of 
the  coming,  the   arrival,"  and  in  the  second  "on  the 
process  of  the  coming  and  the  welcome."  *     "AH  that 
the  Father  giveth  me  shall  come  unto  me" — shall  cer- 
tainly  and    unfailingly   reach    me.       "And   him    that 
cometh   unto   me   I  will   in   nowise  cast  out" — "him 
that  is  in  the  process  of  coming,"— yea,  even  though  he 
is  but  just  begun,  with  weak  and  faltering  steps,  even 
such  an  one  as  this  who  is  but  beginning  to  come—"  I 
will  in  no  wise  cast  out." 

What  a  blessed  assurance,  when  faith  is  made  thus 
not  the  ground  of  salvation,  not  the  condition  of  salva- 
tion, but  its  evidence  !  It  is  here  that  the  sweet  herb 
of  election  begins  to  pour  forth  its  refreshing  cordial. 
Men  may  telf  us,  indeed,  "  Believe  and  you  shall  be 
saved,"  while  still  making  faith  the  ground  or  the  con- 
dition of  salvation.  And,  then,  with  what  dreadful  so- 
licitude will  we  pluck  up  our  faith  over  and  over  again 
by  the  roots,  to  examine  it  with  anxious  fear  :  Is  it  the 
ridit  faith?     Is  it  a  strong  enough  faith?     Do  I   be- 

♦  Westcott  in  loc. 


30  The  End  of  the  Incar7iatio7i. 

licve  aright  ?  Do  I  believe  enough  ?  Shall  I  abide  in 
my  belief  until  the  end  ?  Dreadful  uncertainty  !  Inex- 
pressible misery  of  ineradicable  doubt !  It  is  only  when 
we  have  learned  from  such  words  of  our  Master  as  those 
before  us  to-day,  that  we  dare  say  to  our  souls  not  only 
Believe  and  ye  shall  be  saved  !  but  those  other  words  of 
deeper  meaning  and  fuller  comfort,  caught  from  the 
Master's  own  blessed  lips  :  Believe  and  ye  ai-c  saved  ! 
"  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,"  says  our  Saviour  in 
words  which  sum  up  previous  teachings  (John  iii.  i8, 
36)  :  "  He  that  heareth  my  words  and  believeth  Him 
that  sent  me,  hath  eternal  life,  and  cometh  not  into 
judgment  but  hath  passed  out  of  death  into  life." 
Blessed  John,  who  so  caught  his  Master's  words  and  re- 
corded them  for  us.  When  faith  is  thus  made  not  the 
ground  or  the  condition,  but  the  evidence  of  salvation, 
our  eternal  bliss  is  no  longer  suspended  in  any  sense  on 
aught  that  we  are  or  do,  but  hangs  solely  on  the  work 
of  Christ,  doing  His  Father's  will.  Faith,  even  faith,  as 
the  ofround  or  condition  of  salvation,  mav  be  also  the 
ground  of  despair:  but  faith  as  the  proof  of  salvation  is 
the  charter  of  assured  though  humble  hope.  It  takes 
hold  of  the  "strong  Son  of  God,  immortal  love,"  and 
of  the  indefectible  purpose  of  Almighty  grace  which 
cannot  fail  or  know  any  shadow  of  turning.  This  we 
owe  to  that  doctrine  of  the  eternal  covenant  which  our 
blessed  Saviour  reveals  to  us  in  the  words  on  which  we 
have  meditated  to-day.  Because  of  its  blessed  pro- 
visions we  can  cry  joy  to  our  souls,  though  they  trem- 
ble with  natural  fear  and  can  scarce  believe  that  Christ 
will  save  such  faithless  souls  as  they.  Though  they  have 
faith  but  as  a  grain  of  mustard-seed,   they  are  saved 


The  End  of  the  I)ica7'nation.  31 

already.  For,  this  is  the  will  of  Him  who  sent  our  Re- 
deemer, that  of  all  that  He  gave  Him,  He  should  lose 
nothing,  but  should  raise  it  up  at  the  last  day  :  for  this 
is  the  will  of  the  Father  that  every  one  that  beholdeth 
the  Son  and  believeth  on  Him  should  have  eternal  life 
and  He  should  raise  him  up  at  the  last  day. 


II. 

THE   EXAMPLE   OF   THE    INCARNATION. 


11. 

THE  EXAMPLE  OF  THE  INCARNATION. 

Philippians  ii,  5-8  :  Let  this  mind  be  in  you,  which  was  also  in  Christ 
Jesus  ;  who,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  thought  it  not  robbery  to  be  equal 
with  God :  hut  made  himself  of  710  reputation,  and  took  upon  him  the  form 
of  a  servant,  and  was  made  in  the  likcfiess  of  men :  and  being  found  in 
fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled  himself,  and  became  obedictit  unto  death, 
even  the  death  of  the  cross. 

"  Christ  our  Example  ":  after  "  Christ  our  Redeemer," 
no  words  can  more  deeply  stir  the  Christian  heart  than 
these.  Every  Christian  joyfully  recognizes  the  example 
of  Christ,  as,  in  the  admirable  words  of  a  great  Scotch 
commentator,  a  body  "of  living  legislation,"  as  "law, 
embodied  and  pictured  in  a  perfect  humanity."  In  Him, 
in  a  word,  we  find  the  moral  ideal  historically  realized, 
and  we  bow  before  it  as  sublime  and  yearn  after  it  with 
all  the  assembled  desires  of  our  renewed  souls. 

How  lovingly  we  follow  in  thought  every  footstep  of 
the  Son  of  Man,  on  the  rim  of  hills  that  shut  in  the 
emerald  cup  of  Nazareth,  on  the  blue  marge  of  Genne- 
saret,  over  the  mountains  of  Judea,  and  long  to  walk  in 
spirit  by  His  side.  He  came  to  save  every  age,  says 
Irenseus,  and  therefore  He  came  as  an  infant,  a  child,  a 
boy,  a  youth,  and  a  man.  And  there  is  no  age  that  can- 
not find  its  example  in  Him.  We  see  Him,  the  proper- 
est  child  that  ever  was  given  to  a  mother's  arms,  through 
all  the  years  of  childhood  at  Nazareth  "subjecting 
Himself  to  His  parents."    We  see  Him  a  youth,  labor- 


36  The  Example  of  the  Incarnatio7i. 

ing  day  by  day  contentedly  at  His  father's  bench,  in  this 
lower  sphere,  too,  with  no  other  thought  than  to  be 
"about  His  father's  business."  We  see  Him  in  His 
holy  manhood,  going,  "as  His  custom  was,"  Sabbath 
by  Sabbath,  to  the  synagogue, — God  as  He  was,  not  too 
good  to  worship  with  His  weaker  brethren.  And  then 
the  horizon  broadens.  We  see  Him  at  the  banks  of 
Jordan,  because  it  became  Him  to  fulfil  every  righteous- 
ness, meekly  receiving  the  baptism  of  repentance  for  us. 
We  see  Him  in  the  wilderness,  calmly  rejecting  the 
subtlest  trials  of  the  evil  one  :  refusing  to  supply  His 
needs  by  a  misuse  of  His  divine  power,  repelling  the 
confusion  of  tempting  God  with  trusting  God,  declining 
to  seek  His  Father's  ends  by  any  other  than  His  Father's 
means.  We  see  Him  among  the  thousands  of  Galilee, 
anointed  of  God  with  the  Holy  Ghost  and  power,  going 
about  doing  good  :  with  no  pride  of  birth,  though  He 
was  a  king  ;  with  no  pride  of  intellect,  though  omni- 
science dwelt  within  Him;  with  no  pride  of  power,  though 
all  power  in  Heaven  and  earth  was  in  His  hands  ;  or  of 
station,  though  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  dwelt  in 
Him  bodily;  or  of  superior  goodness  or  holiness:  but 
in  lowliness  of  mind  esteeming  every  one  better  than 
Himself,  healing  the  sick,  casting  out  devils,  feeding  the 
hungry,  and  everywhere  breaking  to  men  the  bread  of 
life.  We  see  Him  everywhere  offering  to  men  His  life 
for  the  salvation  of  their  souls  :  and  when,  at  last,  the 
forces  of  evil  gathered  thick  around  Him,  walking,  alike 
without  display  and  dismay,  the  path  of  suffering 
appointed  for  Him,  and  giving  His  life  at  Calvary  that 
through  His  death  the  world  might  live. 

"  Which  of  you  convinceth  me  of  sin  ?"  is  too  low  a 
question.     Who  can  find  in  all  His  life  a  single  lack,  a 


The  Example  of  the  Inca7'7iation.  2>7 

single  failure  to  set  us  a  perfect  example?  In  what 
difficulty  of  life,  in  what  trial,  in  what  danger  or  uncer- 
tainty, when  we  turn  our  eyes  to  Him,  do  we  fail  to  find 
just  the  example  that  we  need  ?  And  if  perchance 
we  are,  by  the  grace  of  God,  enabled  to  walk  with  Him 
but  a  step  in  the  way,  how  our  hearts  burn  within  us 
with  longing  to  be  always  with  Him, — to  be  strength- 
ened by  the  almighty  power  of  God  in  the  inner  man, 
to  make  every  footprint  which  He  has  left  in  the  world 
a  stepping-stone  to  climb  upward  over  His  divine  path. 
Do  we  not  rightly  say  that  next  to  our  longing  to  be  in 
Christ  is  our  corresponding  longing  to  be  like  Christ ; 
that  only  second  in  our  hearts  to  His  great  act  of  obedi- 
ence unto  death  by  which  He  became  our  Saviour, 
stands  His  holy  life  in  our  world  of  sin,  by  which  ?Ie 
becomes  our  example  ? 

Of  course  our  text  is  not  singular  in  calling  upon  us 
to  make  Christ  our  example.  "  Be  ye  imitators  of  me, 
even  as  I  also  am  of  Christ  Jesus,"  is  rather  the  whole 
burden  of  the  ethical  side  of  Paul's  teaching.  And  in 
this,  too,  he  was  but  the  imitator  of  his  Lord,  who 
pleads  with  us  to  "  learn  of  Him  because  He  is  meek 
and  lowly  in  heart."  The  peculiarity  of  our  present 
passage  is  that  it  takes  us  back  of  Christ's  earthly  life 
and  bids  us  imitate  Him  in  the  great  act  of  His  incarna- 
tion itself.  Not,  of  course,  as  if  the  implication  were 
that  we  were  equal  with  Christ  and  needed  to  stoop  to 
such  service  as  He  performed.  "  Why  art  thou  proud, 
O  man?"  Augustine  asks  pointedly.  "God  for  thee 
became  low.  Thou  wouldst  perhaps  be  ashamed  to  im- 
itate a  lowly  man  ;  then  at  least  imitate  the  lowly  God. 
The  Son  of  God  came  in  the  character  of  man  and  was 
made  low lie,  since  He  was  God,  became  man  : 


38  The  Exa7nple  of  the  Incarnation. 

do  thou,  O  man,  recognize  that  thou  art  man.  Thy  en- 
tire humility  is  to  know  thyself."  The  very  force  of  the 
appeal  lies,  in  a  word,  in  the  infinite  exaltation  of  Christ 
above  us :  and  the  mention  of  the  incarnation  is  the 
Apostle's  reminder  to  us  of  the  ineffable  majesty  which 
was  by  nature  His  to  whom  he  would  raise  our  admir- 
ing eyes.  Paul  pries  at  our  hearts  here  with  the  great 
lever  of  the  deity  of  our  exemplar.  He  calls  upon  us 
to  do  nothing  less  than  to  be  imitators  of  God.  "  What 
encouragement  is  greater  than  this  ?  "  cries  Chrysostom, 
with  his  instinctive  perception  of  the  motive-springs  of 
the  human  heart.  "  Nothing  arouses  a  great  soul  to  the 
performance  of  good  works,  so  much  as  learning  that 
in  this  it  is  likened  to  God."  And  here,  too,  Paul  is  but 
the  follower  of  Jiis  Lord :  "Be  ye  merciful,  as  your 
Father  which  is  in  heaven  is  merciful,"  are  words  which 
fell  from  His  divine  lips,  altogether  similar  in  their  im- 
plication to  Paul's  words  in  the  text :  "  Let  it  be  this  mind 
that  is  in  you,  which  also  was  in  Christ  Jesus."  It  is 
the  Spirit  which  animated  our  Lord  in  the  act  of  His 
incarnation  which  His  apostle  would  see  us  imitate.  He 
would  have  us  in  all  our  acts  to  be  like  Christ,  as  He 
showed  Himself  to  be  in  the  innermost  core  of  His  be- 
ing, when  He  became  poor.  He  that  was  rich,  that  we 
by  His  poverty  might  be  made  rich. 

We  perceive,  then,  that  the  exhortation  of  the  Apostle 
gathers  force  for  itself  from  the  deity  of  Christ,  and 
from  the  nature  of  the  transaction  by  which  He,  being 
God,  was  brought  into  this  sphere  of  dependent,  earthly 
life  in  which  we  live  by  nature.  It  is  altogether  nat- 
ural, then,  that  he  sharpens  his  appeal  by  reminding  his 
readers  somewhat  fully  who  Christ  was  and  what  He  did 
for  our  salvation,  in  order  that,  having  the  facts  more 


The  Example  of  the  Incarnaiion.  39 

vividly  before  their  minds,  they  may  more  acutely  feel 
the  spirit  by  which  He  was  animated.  Thus,  in  a  per- 
fectly natural  way,  Paul  is  led,  not  to  inform  his  readers 
but  to  remind  them,  in  a  few  quick  and  lively  phrases 
which  do  not  interrupt  the  main  lines  of  discourse  but 
rather  etch  them  in  with  a  deeper  color,  of  what  we  may 
call  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Christ.  With 
such  a  masterly  hand,  or  let  us  rather  say  with  such  an 
eager  spirit  and  such  a  loving  clearness  and  firmness  of 
touch,  has  he  done  this,  that  these  few  purely  incidental 
words  constitute  one  of  the  most  complete  statements  of 
an  essential  doctrine  to  be  found  within  the  whole  com- 
pass of  the  Scriptures.  Though  compressed  within  the 
limits  of  three  short  verses,  it  ranks  in  fulness  of  exposi- 
tion with  the  already  marvellously  concise  outline  of  the 
same  doctrine  given  in  the  opening  verses  of  the  Gospel 
of  John.  Whenever  the  subtleties  of  heresy  confuse  our 
minds  as  we  face  the  problems  which  have  been  raised 
about  the  Person  of  our  Lord,  it  is  preeminently  to 
these  verses  that  we  flee  to  have  our  apprehension 
purified,  and  our  thinking  corrected.  The  sharp  phrases 
cut  their  way  through  every  error :  or,  as  we  may  better 
say,  they  are  like  a  flight  of  swift  arrows,  each  winged 
to  the  joints  of  the  harness. 

The  golden-mouthed  preacher  of  the  ancient  church, 
impressed  with  this  fulness  of  teaching  and  inspired 
himself  to  one  of  his  loftiest  flights  by  the  verve  of  the 
Apostle's  crisp  language,  pictures  the  passage  itself  as 
an  arena,  and  the  Truth,  as  it  runs  burning  through  the 
clauses,  as  the  victorious  chariot  dashing  against  and 
overthrowing  its  contestants  one  after  the  other,  until 
at  last,  amid  the  clamor  of  applause  which  rises  from 
every  side  to  heaven,  it  springs  alone  towards  the  goal, 


40  The  Example  of  the  Incarnation. 

with  coursers  winged  with  joy  sweeping  like  a  single 
flash  over  the  ground.  One  by  one  he  points  out  the 
heresies  concerning  the  Person  of  Christ  which  had 
sprung  up  in  the  ancient  church,  as  clause  by  clause  the 
text  smites  and  destroys  them  ;  and  is  not  content 
until  he  shows  how  the  knees  of  all  half-truths  and 
whole  falsehoods  alike  concerning  this  great  matter  are 
made  by  these  searching  words  to  bow  before  our 
Saviour's  perfect  deity,  His  complete  humanity,  and 
the  unity  of  His  person.  The  magic  of  the  passage  has 
lost  none  of  its  virtue  with  the  millennium  and  a  half 
wiiich  has  fled  by  since  John  electrified  Constantinople 
with  his  golden  words  :  this  sword  of  the  Spirit  is  as 
keen  to-day  as  it  was  then,  and  happy  is  the  man  who 
knows  its  temper  and  has  the  arm  to  wield  it.  But  we 
must  not  lose  ourselves  in  a  purely  theological  interest 
with  such  a  passage  before  us.  Rather  let  us  keep  our 
eyes,  for  this  hour,  on  Paul's  main  purpose,  and  seek  to 
feel  the  force  of  the  example  of  Christ  as  he  here  ad- 
vances it,  for  the  government  of  our  lives.  But  to  do 
this,  as  he  points  it  with  so  full  a  reference  to  the  Person 
of  Christ,  following  him  we  must  begin  by  striving  to 
realize  who  and  what  our  Lord  was,  who  set  us  this  ex- 
ample. 

I.  Let  us  observe,  then,  first,  that  the  actor  to  whose 
example  Paul  would  direct  our  eyes,  is  declared  by  him 
to  have  been  no  other  than  God  Himself.  "  Who  was 
before  in  the  form  of  God,"  are  his  words  :  and  they  are 
words  than  which  no  others  could  be  chosen  which 
would  more  explicitly  or  with  more  directness  assert 
the  deity  of  the  person  who  is  here  designated  by  the 
name  of  Christ  Jesus.  After  the  wear  and  tear  of  two 
thousand  years  on  the  phrases,  it  would  not  be  surpris- 


The  Example  of  the  Incai'iiation.  41 

ing  if  we  should  fail  to  feel  this  as  strongly  as  we  ought. 
Let  us  remember  that  the  phraseology  which  Paul  here 
employs  was  the  popular  usage  of  his  day,  though  first 
given  general  vogue  by  the  Aristotelian  philosophy  : 
and  that  it  was  accordingly  the  most  natural  language 
for  strongly  asserting  the  deity  of  Christ  which  could 
suggest  itself  to  him.  As  you  know,  this  mode  of 
speech  resolved  everything  into  its  matter  and  its  form, 
— into  the  bare  material  out  of  which  it  is  made,  and 
that  body  of  characterizing  qualities  which  constitute  it 
what  it  is.  "  Form,"  in  a  word,  is  equivalent  to  our 
phrase,  "specific  character."  If  we  may  illustrate  great 
things  by  small,  we  may  say,  in  this  manner  of  speech, 
that  the  "matter"  of  a  sword,  for  instance,  is  steel, 
while  its  "  form  "  is  that  whole  body  of  characterizing 
qualities  which  distinguish  a  sword  from  all  other  pieces 
of  steel,  and  which,  therefore,  make  this  particular  piece 
of  steel  distinctively  a  sword.  In  this  case,  these  are,  of 
course,  largely  matters  of  shape  and  contour.  But  now 
the  steel  itself,  which  constitutes  the  matter  of  the 
sword,  has  also  its  "  matter  "  and  its  "  form":  its  "mat- 
ter" being  metal,  and  its  "  form  "  being  the  whole  body 
of  qualities  that  distinguish  steel  from  other  metals,  and 
make  this  metal  steel.  Going  back  still  a  step,  metal 
itself  has  its  "  matter  "  and  "  form  ";  its  "  matter  "  being 
material  substance  and  its  "  form  "  that  body  of  qualities 
which  distinguish  metallic  from  other  kinds  of  sub- 
stance. And  last  of  all,  matter  itself  has  its  "  matter," 
namely,  substance,  and  its  "  form,"  namely,  the  qualities 
which  distinguish  material  from  spiritual  substance,  and 
make  this  substance  what  we  call  matter.  The  same 
mode  of  speech  is,  of  course,  equally  applicable  to  the 
spiritual  sphere.     The  "matter"  of  the  human  spirit  is 


42  TJic  Example  of  the  hicarnation. 

bare  spiritual  substance,  while  its  "form"  is  that  body 
of  qualities  which  constitute  this  spirit  a  human  spirit, 
and  in  the  absence  of  which,  or  by  the  change  of  which, 
this  spirit  would  cease  to  be  human  and  become  some 
other  kind  of  spirit.  The  "  matter"  of  an  angel,  again, 
is  bare  spiritual  substance,  while  the  "  form  "  is  the  body 
of  qualities  which  make  this  spirit  specifically  an  angel. 
So,  too,  with  God  :  the  "  matter  "  of  God  is  bare  spirit- 
ual substance,  and  the  "  form  "  is  that  body  of  qualities 
which  distinguish  Him  from  all  other  spiritual  beings, 
which  constitute  Him  God,  and  without  which  He 
would  not  be  God.  What  Paul  asserts  then,  when  he 
says  that  Christ  Jesus  existed  in  the  "  form  of  God,"  is 
that  He  had  all  those  characterizing  qualities  which  make 
God  God,  the  presence  of  which  constitutes  God,  and 
in  the  absence  of  which  God  does  not  exist.  He  who 
is  "  in  the  form  of  God,"  is  God. 

Nor  is  it  without  significance  that,  out  of  the  possible 
modes  of  expression  open  to  him,  Paul  was  led  to  choose 
just  this  mode  of  asserting  the  deity  of  our  Lord.  His 
mind  in  this  passage  was  not  on  the  bare  divine  essence  ; 
it  was  upon  the  divine  qualities  and  prerogatives  of 
Christ.  It  is  not  the  abstract  conception  that  Christ  is 
God  that  moves  us  to  our  deepest  admiration  for  His 
sublime  act  of  self-sacrifice:  but  rather  our  concrete 
realization  that  He  was  all  that  God  is,  and  had  all  that 
God  has, — that  God's  omnipotence  was  His,  His  infinite 
exaltation.  His  unapproachable  blessedness.  Therefore 
Paul  is  instinctively  led  to  choose  an  expression  which 
tells  us  not  the  bare  fact  that  Christ  was  God,  but  that 
He  was  "in  the  form  of  God," — that  He  had  in  full 
possession  all  those  characterizing  qualities  which,  taken 
together,  make  God  that  all-holy,  perfect,  all-blessed  be- 


The  Example  of  tJie  Incarnation.  43 

ing  which  we  call  God.  Thus  the  Apostle  prepares  his 
readers  for  the  great  example  by  quickening  their  appre- 
hension not  only  of  who,  but  of  what  Christ  was. 

II.  Let  us  note,  then,  secondly,  that  the  Apostle  out- 
lines for  us  very  fully  the  action  which  this  divine  being 
performed.  "  He  took  the  form  of  a  servant  by  coming 
into  the  likeness  of  men  ;  and  being  found  in  fashion  as 
a  man,  lie  humbled  Himself  by  becoming  subject  even 
unto  death,  and  that  the  death  of  the  cross."  There  is 
no  metamorphosis  of  substance  asserted  here  :  the  "  form 
of  God  "  is  not  said  to  have  been  transmuted  into  the 
"form  of  a  servant";  but  lie  who  was  "in  the  form  of 
God"  is  declared  to  have  taken  also  to  Himself  "the 
form  of  a  servant."  Nor  is  there,  on  the  other  hand, 
any  deceptive  show  of  an  unreal  humiliation  brought  be- 
fore us  here:  He  took,  not  the  appearance,  mere  state 
and  circumstances,  or  mere  work  and  performance,  but 
veritably  "the  form  of  a  servant," — all  those  essential 
qualities  and  attributes  which  belong  to,  and  constitute 
a  being  "a  servant."  The  assumption  involved  the 
taking  of  an  actually  servile  nature,  as  well  as  of  a  sub- 
ordinate station  and  a  servant's  work.  And  therefore  it 
is  at  once  further  explained  in  both  its  mode  and  its 
effects.  He  took  the  form  of  a  servant  "  by  coming 
into  the  likeness  of  men  ":  He  did  not  become  merely  a 
man,  but  by  taking  the  form  of  a  servant  He  came  into 
a  state  in  which  He  appeared  as  man.  His  humanity 
was  real  and  complete  :  but  it  was  not  all, — He  remained 
God  in  assuming  humanity,  and  therefore  only  appeared 
as  man,  not  became  only  man.  And  by  taking  the  form 
of  a  servant  and  thus  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man, 
He  became  subject  to  obedience, — an  obedience  pressed 
so  far  in   its  humiliation   that    it  extended  even  unto 


44  The  Example  of  the  Incarnatiofi. 

death,  and  that  the  shameful  death  of  the  cross.  Words 
cannot  adequately  paint  the  depth  of  this  humiliation. 
But  this  it  was, — the  taking  of  the  form  of  a  servant 
with  its  resultant  necessity  of  obedience  to  such  a  bitter 
end, — this  it  was  that  He  who  was  by  nature  in  the 
form  of  God, — in  the  full  possession  and  use  of  all  the 
Divine  attributes  and  qualities,  powers,  and  prerogatives, 
— was  willing  to  do  for  us. 

III.  Let  us  observe,  then,  thirdly,  that  the  Apostle 
clearly  announces  to  us  the  spirit  in  which  our  Lord 
performed  this  great  act.  "Although  He  was  in  the 
form  of  God,  He  yet  did  not  consider  His  being  on  an 
equality  with  God  a  precious  prize  to  be  eagerly  retained, 
but  made  no  account  of  Himself,  taking  the  form  of  a 
servant."  It  was  then  in  a  spirit  of  pure  unselfishness 
and  self-sacrifice,  that  looked  not  on  its  own  things  but 
on  the  things  of  others,  that  under  the  force  of  love 
esteemed  others  more  than  Himself, — it  was  in  this 
mind  :  or,  in  the  Apostle's  own  words,  it  was  as  not  con- 
sidering His  essential  equality  with  God  as  a  precious 
possession,  but  making  no  account  of  Himself, — it  was 
in  this  mind,  that  Christ  Jesus  who  was  before  in  the  form 
of  God  took  the  form  of  a  servant.  This  was  the  state 
of  mind  that  led  Him  to  so  marvellous  an  act, — no  com- 
pulsion from  His  Father,  no  desires  for  Himself,  no 
hope  of  gain  or  fear  of  loss,  but  simple,  unselfish,  self- 
sacrificing  love. 

Now  it  is  not  to  be  overlooked  that  some  of  the 
clauses  the  meaning  of  which  we  have  sought  to  fathom, 
are  differently  explained  among  expositors.  Neverthe- 
less, althouirh  I  have  sousfht  to  adduce  them  so  as  to 
bring  out  the  Apostle's  exact  meaning,  and  although  I 
believe  that  his  appeal  acquires  an  additional  point  and 


The  Example  of  the  Incarnation.  45 

a  stronger  leverage  when  they  are  thus  understood,  it 
remains"  true  that  the  main  drift  of  the  passage  is  un- 
affected  by  any  of   the   special    interpretations  which 
reasonable  expositors  have  put  upon  the  several  clauses. 
These  divergent  expositions  do  seriously  affect  our  doc- 
trine of  the  Person  of  Christ.     In  particular,  all^  the 
forms  of   the  popular  modern  doctrine  of  Kenosis  or 
Exinanition,  which  teaches  that  the  divine  Logos  in 
becoming  man  "emptied  Himself,"  and  thus,  that  the 
very  God  in  a  more  or  less   literal    sense   contracted 
Himself   to   the  limits  of  humanity,    find  their  chief, 
almost  their  sole  Biblical  basis  in  what  appears  to  me  a 
gratuitously  erroneous    interpretation   of  one  of  these 
clauses,— that  one  which  the  Authorized  Version  renders, 
"  He  made  Himself  of  no  reputation,"  and  which  I  have 
ventured  to  render,  "  He  made  no  account  of  Himself," 
that  is,  in  comparison  with  the  needs    of  others;  but 
which  the  theologians    in  question   followed,  unfortu- 
nately as  I  think,  by  the  Revised  Version,  render  with  an 
excessive  literality,  "He  emptied  Himself,"  thereby  resur- 
recting the  literal  physical  sense  of  the  word  in  an  un- 
natural context.     We  have  many  reasons  to  give  why 
this  is  an  illegitimate  rendering;  chief  among  which  are, 
that  the  word  is  commonly  employed  in  its  figurative 
sense  and  that  the  intrusion  of  the  literal  sense  here  is 
forbidden  by  the  context.    But  it  is  unnecessary  to  pause 
to  argue  the  point.    Whatever  the  conclusion  might  be, 
the  main  drift  of  the  passage  remains  the  same.      No 
interpretation  of  this  phrase  can  destroy  the  outstanding 
fact  that  the  passage  at  large  places  before  our  wonder- 
ing eyes  the  two  termini  of  "the  form  of  God"  and 
"the  form  of  a  servant,"  involving  obedience  even  unto 
a  shameful  death;   and   "measures  the  extent  of  our 


4-6  The  Example  of  the  Incarnation. 

Lord's  self-denying  grace  by  the  distance  between 
equality  with  God  and  a  public  execution  on  a  gibbet."  * 
In  any  case  the  emphasis  of  the  passage  is  thrown  upon 
the  spirit  of  self-sacrificing  unselfishness  as  the  impelling 
cause  of  Christ's  humiliation,  which  the  Apostle  adduces 
here  in  order  that  the  sight  of  it  may  impel  us  also  to 
take  no  account  of  ourselves,  but  to  estimate  lightly  all 
that  we  are  or  have  in  comparison  with  the  claims  of 
others  on  our  love  and  devotion.  The  one  subject  of 
the  whole  passage  is  Christ's  marvellous  self-sacrifice. 
Its  one  exhortation  is,  "  Let  it  be  this  mind  that  is  also 
in  you."  As  we  read  through  the  passage  we  may,  by 
contact  with  the  full  mind  and  heart  of  the  Apostle,  learn 
much  more  than  this.  But  let  us  not  fail  to  grasp  this, 
his  chief  message  to  us  here, — that  Christ  Jesus,  though 
He  was  God,  yet  cared  less  for  His  equality  with  God, 
cared  less  for  Himself  and  His  own  things,  than  He  did 
for  us,  and  therefore  gave  Himself  for  us. 

Firmly  grasping  this,  then,  as  the  essential  content 
and  special  message  of  the  passage,  there  are  some  in- 
ferences that  flow  from  it  which  we  cannot  afford  not 
to  remind  ourselves  of. 

I.  And  first  of  these  is  a  very  great  and  marvellous 
one, — that  we  have  a  God  who  is  capable  of  self- 
sacrifice  for  us.  It  was  although  He  was  in  the  form 
of  God,  that  Christ  Jesus  did  not  consider  His  being  on 
an  equality  with  God  so  precious  a  possession  that  He 
could  not  lay  it  aside,  but  rather  made  no  account  of 
Himself.  It  was  our  God  who  so  loved  us  that  He 
gave  Himself  for  us.  Now,  herein  is  a  wonderful  thing. 
Men  tell  us  that  God  is,  by  the  very  necessity  of  His 

*  The  phraseology  here  is  borrowed  from  Eadie's  Com.  in  loc. 


The  Example  of  the  Incarnation.  47 

nature,  incapable  of  passion,  incapable  of  bein^^  moved 
by  inducements  from  without ;  that  He  dwells  in  holy 
calm  and  unchangeable  blessedness,  untouched  by  human 
sufferings  or  human  sorrows  forever, — haunting 

"  The  lucid  interspace  of  world  and  world. 
Where  never  creeps  a  cloud,  nor  moves  a  wind, 
Nor  ever  falls  the  least  white  star  of  snow, 
Nor  ever  lowest  roll  of  thunder  moans. 
Nor  sound  of  human  sorrow  mounts  to  mar 
His  sacred,  everlasting  calm." 

Let  us  bless  our  God  that  it  is  not  true.  God  can 
feel ;  God  does  love.  We  have  Scriptural  warrant  for 
believing,  as  it  has  been  well  phrased,  that  moral  heroism 
has  a  place  within  the  sphere  of  the  Divine  nature :  we 
have  Scriptural  warrant  for  believing  that,  like  the  old 
hero  of  Zurich,  God  has  reached  out  loving  arms  and 
gathered  into  His  own  bosom  that  forest  of  darts  which 
otherwise  had  pierced  ours. 

But  is  not  this  gross  anthropomorphism  }  We  are 
careless  of  names  :  it  is  the  truth  of  God.  And  we  de- 
cline to  yield  up  the  God  of  the  Bible  and  the  God  of 
our  hearts  to  any  philosophical  abstraction.  We  have 
and  we  must  have  an  ethical  God;  a  God  whom  we  can 
love,  and  in  whom  we  can  trust.  We  may  feel  awe  in 
the  presence  of  the  Absolute,  as  we  feel  awe  in  the 
presence  of  the  storm  or  of  the  earthquake:  we  may 
feel  our  dependence  in  its  presence,  as  we  feel  our  help- 
lessness before  the  tornado  or  the  flood.  But  we  can- 
not love  it ;  we  cannot  trust  it ;  and  our  hearts,  which 
are  just  as  trustworthy  a  guide  as  our  dialectics,  cry  out 
for  a  God  whom  we  may  love  and  trust.  We  decline 
once  for  all  to  subject  our  whole  conception  of  God  to 
the  category  of  the  Absolute,  which,  as  has  been  truly 


48  The  Example  of  the  Incarnation. 

said,  "  like  Pharaoh's  lean  kine,  devours  all  other  attri- 
butes." *  Neither  is  this  an  unphilosophical  procedure. 
As  has  recently  been  set  forth  renewedly  by  Andrew 
Seth,t  "  we  should  be  unfaithful  to  the  fundamental 
principle  of  the  theory  of  knowledge  "  "  if  we  did  not 
interpret  by  means  of  the  highest  category  within  our 
reach."  "  We  should  be  false  to  ourselves,  if  we  denied 
in  God  what  we  recognize  as  the  source  of  dignity  and 
worth  in  ourselves."  In  order  to  escape  an  anthropo- 
morphic God,  we  must  not  throw  ourselves  at  the  feet 
of  a  zoomorphic  or  an  amorphic  one. 

Nevertheless,  let  us  rejoice  that  our  God  has  not  left 
us  by  searching  to  find  Him  out.  Let  us  rejoice  that 
He  has  plainly  revealed  Himself  to  us  in  His  Word  as 
a  God  who  loves  us,  and  who,  because  He  loves  us,  has 
sacrificed  Himself  for  us.  Let  us  remember  that  the 
fundamental  conception  in  the  Christian  idea  of  God  is 
that  God  is  love  ;  and  the  fundamental  dogma  of  the 
Christian  religion  is  that  God  so  loved  us  that  He  gave 
Himself  for  us.  Accordingly,  the  primary  presupposi- 
tion of  our  present  passage  is  that  our  God  was  capable 
of,  and  did  actually  perform,  this  amazing  act  of  un- 
selfish self-sacrifice  for  the  good  of  man. 

2.  The  second  inference  that  we  should  draw  from 
our  passage  consists  simply  in  following  the  Apostle  in 
his  application  of  this  divine  example  to  our  human 
life:  a  life  of  self-sacrificing  unselfishness  is  the  most 
divinely  beautiful  life  that  man  can  lead.  He  whom  as 
our  Master  we  have  engaged  to  obey,  whom  as  our 
Example  we  are  pledged  to  imitate,  is  presented"  to  us 
here  as  the  great  model  of  self-sacrificing  unselfishness. 

*  By  Prof.  A.  B.  Bruce,  in  his  Humiliation  of  Christ. 
t  Hegelianism  and  Personality,  p.  222. 


The  Example  of  the  Incarnation.  49 

"  Let  this  mind  be  in  you,  which  was  also  in  Christ 
Jesus,"  is  the  Apostle's  pleading.  We  need  to  note 
carefully,  however,  that  it  is  not  self-depreciation,  but 
self-abnegation,  that  is  thus  commended  to  us.  If  we 
would  follow  Christ,  we  must,  every  one  of  us,  not  in 
pride  but  in  humility,  yet  not  in  lowness  but  in  lowli- 
ness, not  degrade  ourselves  but  forget  ourselves,  and 
seek  every  man  not  his  own  things  but  those  of  others. 
Who  does  not  see  that  in  this  organism  which  we 
call  human  society,  such  a  mode  of  life  is  the  condition 
of  all  real  help  and  health  ?  There  is,  no  doubt,  another 
ideal  of  life  far  more  grateful  to  our  fallen  human 
nature,  an  ideal  based  on  arrogance,  assumption,  self- 
,^— assertion,  working  through  strife,  and  issuing  in  con- 
quest,— conquest  of  a  place  for  ourselves,  a  position, 
the  admiration  of  man,  power  over  men.  We  see  its 
working  on  every  side  of  us  :  in  the  competition  of 
business  life, — in  the  struggle  for  wealth  on  the  one  side, 
forcing  a  struggle  for  bare  bread  on  the  other ;  in  social 
life, — in  the  fierce  battle  of  men  and  women  for  leading 
parts  in  the  farce  of  social  display ;  even  in  the  church 
itself,  and  among  the  churches,  where,  too,  unhappily, 
arrogant  pretension  and  unchristian  self-assertion  do  not 
fail  to  find  their  temporal  reward.  But  it  is  clear  that 
this  is  not  Christ's  ideal,  nor  is  it  to  this  that  He  has 
set  us  His  perfect  example.  "  He  made  no  account  of 
Himself":  though  He  was  in  the  form  of  God,  He  yet 
looked  not  upon  His  equality  with  God  as  a  possession 
to  be  prized  when  He  could  by  forgetting  self  rescue 
those  whom  He  was  not  ashamed,  amid  all  His  glory, 
to  call  His  brethren. 

Are  there  any  whom  you  and  I  are  ashamed  to  call 
our   brethren?     O    that   the    divine    ideal    of    life    as 


50  The  Example  of  the  Incarnation. 

service  could  take  possession  of  our  souls !  O  that  we 
could  remember  at  all  times  and  in  all  relations  that 
the  Son  of  Man  came  into  the  world  to  minister,  and 
by  His  ministry  has  glorified  all  ministering  for  ever. 
O  that  we  could  once  for  all  grasp  the  meaning  of  the 
great  fact  that  self-forgetfulness  and  self-sacrifice  ex- 
press the  divine  ideals  of  life. 

3.  And  thus  we  are  led  to  a  third  inference,  which 
comes  to  us  from  the  text :  that  it  is  difficult  to  set  a 
hmit  to  the  self-sacrifice  which  the  example  of  Christ 
calls  upon  us  to  be  ready  to  undergo  for  the  good  of  our 
brethren.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  recognize  that 
the  ideal  of  the  Christian  life  is  self-sacrificing  unselfish- 
ness, and  to  allow  that  it  is  required  of  those  who  seek 
to  enter  into  it,  to  subordinate  self  and  to  seek 
first  the  kingdom  of  God.  But  is  it  so  easy  to  ac- 
knowledge, even  to  ourselves,  that  this  is  to  be  read 
not  generally  merely  but  in  detail,  and  is  to  be  applied 
not  only  to  some  eminent  saints  but  to  all  who  would 
be  Christ's  servants  ? — that  it  is  required  of  us,  and  that 
what  is  required  of  us  is  not  some  self-denial  but  all 
self-sacrifice  }  Yet  is  it  not  to  this  that  the  example  of 
Christ  would  lead  us  ? — not,  of  course,  to  self-degrada- 
tion, not  to  self-effacement  exactly,  but  to  complete 
self-abnegation,  entire  and  ungrudging  self-sacrifice  ? 
Is  it  to  be  unto  death  itself?  Christ  died.  Are  we  to 
endure  wrongs  ?  What  wrongs  did  He  not  meekly  bear  ? 
Are  we  to  surrender  our  clear  and  recognized  rights? 
Did  Christ  stand  upon  His  unquestioned  right  of  re- 
taining His  equality  with  God  ?  Are  we  to  endure 
unnatural  evils,  permit  ourselves  to  be  driven  into  inap- 
propriate situations,  unresistingly  sustain  injurious  and 
unjust  imputations  and  attacks  ?    What  more  unnatural 


The  Example  of  the  Incar7iatioti.  51 

than  tliat  the  God  of  the  universe  should  become  a 
servant  in  the  world,  ministering  not  to  His  Father  only, 
but  also  to  His  creatures, — our  Lord  and  Master  wash- 
ing our  very  feet  ?  What  more  abhorrent  than  that 
God  should  die?  There  is  no  length  to  which  Christ's 
self-sacrifice  did  not  lead  Him.  These  words  are  dull 
and  inexpressive  ;  we  cannot  enter  into  thoughts  so  high. 
He  who  was  in  the  form  of  God  took  such  thought 
for  us,  that  He  made  no  account  of  Himself.  Into  the 
immeasurable  calm  of  the  divine  blessedness  He  per- 
mitted this  thought  to  enter,  "I  will  die  for  men!" 
And  so  mighty  was  His  love,  so  colossal  the  divine 
purpose  to  save,  that  He  thought  nothing  of  His 
divine  majesty,  nothing  of  His  unsullied  blessedness, 
nothing  of  His  equality  with  God,  but,  absorbed  in  us, — 
our  needs,  our  misery,  our  helplessness — He  made  no 
account  of  Himself.  If  this  is  to  be  our  example,  what 
limit  can  we  set  to  our  self-sacrifice  .^  Let  us  remember 
that  we  are  no  longer  our  own  but  Christ's,  bought 
with  the  price  of  His  precious  blood,  and  are  hence- 
forth to  live,  not  for  ourselves  but  for  Him, — for  Him  in 
His  creatures,  serving  Him  in  serving  them.  Let  all 
thought  of  our  dignity,  our  possessions,  our  rights, 
perish  out  of  sight,  when  Christ's  service  calls  to  us. 
Let  the  mind  be  in  us  that  was  also  in  Him,  when  He 
took  no  account  of  Himself,  but,  God  as  He  was,  took 
the  form  of  a  servant  and  humbled  Himself, — He  who 
was  Lord, — to  lowly  obedience  even  unto  death,  and 
that  the  death  of  the  cross.  In  such  a  mind  as  this, 
where  is  the  end  of  unselfishness  ? 

4.  Let  us  not,  however,  do  the  Apostle  the  injustice 
of  fancying  that  this  is  a  morbid  life  to  which  he  summons 
us.     The  self-sacrifice  to  which  he  exhorts  us,  unlimited 


52  The  Example  of  the  Incarnation. 

as  it  is,  going  all  lengths  and  starting  back  blanched  at 
nothing,  is  nevertheless  not  an  unnatural  life.  After 
all,  it  issues  not  in  the  destruction  of  self,  but  only  in 
the  destruction  of  selfishness ;  it  leads  us  not  to  a 
Buddha-like  unselfing,  but  to  a  Christ-like  self-develop- 
ment.    It  would  not  make  us  into 

"  deedless  dreamers  lazying  out  a  life 
Of  self-suppression,  hot  of  selfless  love  " 

but  would  light  the  flames  of  a  love  within  us  by  which 
we  would  literally  "  ache  for  souls."  The  example  of 
Christ  and  the  exhortation  of  Paul  found  themselves 
upon  a  sense  of  the  unspeakable  value  of  souls.  Our 
Lord  took  no  account  of  Himself,  only  because  the 
value  of  the  souls  of  men  pressed  upon  His  heart.  And 
following  Him,  we  are  not  to  consider  our  own  things, 
but  those  of  others,  just  because  everything  earthly  that 
concerns  us  is  as  nothing  compared  with  their  eternal 
welfare. 

Our  self-abnegation  is  thus  not  for  our  own  sake, 
but  for  the  sake  of  others.  And  thus  it  is  not  to  mere 
self-denial  that  Christ  calls  us,  but  specifically  to  self- 
sacrifice  :  not  to  unselfing  ourselves,  but  to  unselfishing 
ourselves.  Self-denial  for  its  own  sake  is  in  its  very 
nature  ascetic,  monkish.  It  concentrates  our  whole 
attention  on  self — self-knowledge,  self-control — and  can, 
therefore,  eventuate  in  nothing  other  than  the  very 
apotheosis  of  selfishness.  At  best  it  succeeds  only  in 
subjecting  the  outer  self  to  the  inner  self,  or  the  lower 
self  to  the  higher  self  ;  and  only  the  more  surely  falls 
into  the  slough  of  self-seeking,  that  it  partially  conceals 
the  selfishness  of  its  goal  by  refining  its  ideal  of  self  and 
excluding  its  grosser  and  more  outward  elements.     Self- 


The  Exa7nple  of  the  hicarnaiion.  53 

denial,  then,  drives  to  the  cloister ;  narrows  and  con- 
tracts the  soul ;  murders  within  us  all  innocent  desires, 
dries  up  all  the  springs  of  sympathy,  and  nurses  and 
coddles  our  self-importance  until  we  grow  so  great  in 
our  own  esteem  as  to  be  careless  of  the  trials  and  suf- 
ferings, the  joys  and  aspirations,  the  strivings  and 
failures  and  successes  of  our  fellow-men.  Self-denial, 
thus  understood,  will  make  us  cold,  hard,  unsympathetic, 
— proud,  arrogant,  self-esteeming, — fanatical,  overbear- 
ing, cruel.  It  may  make  monks  and  Stoics, — it  cannot 
make  Christians. 

It  is  not  to  this  that  Christ's  example  calls  us.  He 
did  not  cultivate  self,  even  His  divine  self:  He  took  no 
account  of  self.  He  was  not  led  by  His  divine  impulse 
out  of  the  world,  driven  back  into  the  recesses  of  His 
own  soul  to  brood  morbidly  over  His  own  needs,  until 
to  gain  His  own  seemed  worth  all  sacrifice  to  Him. 
He  was  led  by  His  love  for  others  into  the  world,  to 
forget  Himself  in  the  needs  of  others,  to  sacrifice  self 
once  for  all  upon  the  altar  of  sympathy.  Self-sacrifice 
brought  Christ  into  the  world.  And  self-sacrifice  will 
lead  us.  His  followers,  not  away  from  but  into  the 
midst  of  men.  Wherever  men  suffer,  there  will  we  be 
to  comfort.  Wherever  men  strive,  there  we  will  be  to 
help.  Wherever  men  fail,  there  will  we  be  to  uplift. 
Wherever  men  succeed,  there  will  we  be  to  rejoice. 
Self-sacrifice  means  not  indifference  to  our  times  and 
our  fellows  :  it  means  absorption  in  them.  It  means 
foro-etfulness  of  self  in  others.  It  means  entering  into 
every  man's  hopes  and  fears,  longings  and  despairs  :  it 
means  manysidedness  of  spirit,  multiform  activity,  mul- 
tiplicity of  sympathies.  It  means  richness  of  develop- 
ment.     It  means  not  that  wc  should  live  one  life,  but  a 


54  ^-^"^  Example  of  the  Incarnation. 

thousand  lives, — binding  ourselves  to  a  thousand  souls 
by  the  filaments  of  so  loving  a  sympathy  that  their 
lives  become  ours.  It  means  that  all  the  experiences 
of  men  shall  smite  our  souls  and  shall  beat  and  batter 
these  stubborn  hearts  of  ours  into  fitness  for  their 
heavenly  home.  It  is,  after  all,  then,  the  path  to  the 
highest  possible  development,  by  which  alone  we  can  be 
made  truly  men. 

Not  that  we  shall  undertake  it  with  this  end  in  view. 
This  were  to  dry  up  its  springs  at  their  source.  We 
cannot  be  self-consciously  self-forgetful,  selfishly  un- 
selfish. Only,  when  we  humbly  walk  this  path,  seeking 
truly  in  it  not  our  own  things  but  those  of  others,  we 
shall  find  the  promise  true,  that  he  who  loses  his  life 
shall  find  it.  Only,  when,  like  Christ,  and  in  loving 
obedience  to  His  call  and  example,  we  take  no  account 
of  ourselves,  but  freely  give  ourselves  to  others,  we  shall 
find,  each  in  his  measure,  the  saying  true  of  himself  also  : 
"  Wherefore  also  God  hath  highly  exalted  him."  The 
path  of  self-sacrifice  is  the  path  to  glory. 


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